User Review : Call of Duty: World at War

Ups

• Realistic ground gaining difficulty.{Some new weapons{Co-Op

Downs

• Enemy difficulty{Dogs in Multiplayer{Hard to tell the difference between crouching and standing

O' the Pacific Theatre!

Call of Duty: World At War, admittedly, is a game I didn't want to buy in all honesty when I first heard about it. The World War II era had been overdone. And after having played Call of Duty 4, one could see how I'd be skeptical about wanting to play a Treyarch game instead of the Infinity Ward game.

However, Call of Duty: World At War is a refreshing palate cleanser rather than the same doldrum games we're used to, which is surprising as a World War II game. Yet if you look back, an actual Triple-A WWII game hasn't come out in awhile. It's been about 2 years in fact. So playing this Call of Duty: World At War gives one the feeling of coming home in a way.

The game starts you out as an soldier in the United States Marines Corps, but as a PoW in Peleliu. Whereupon you are shortly saved by Roebuck and his group of Marines. Much fighting ensues and you work your way out. I've been playing this game on Veteran (for those of you not familiar with the franchise, that's the hardest difficulty), and let me tell you; all throughout the game you literally feel like you are fighting the enemy for every single square inch of ground. They are persistent and don't want to give up. I've found myself thinking many times, "My God! Shouldn't they stop coming soon?" and there's another 5 minutes of fighting and shrieking to be had, fighting for the NPC's, shrieking from me as bullets and grenades whiz around me. And just when you think you've cleared an area and it's safe to move on, you find there was another group waiting to come at you, and the process renews.

Now because of the difficulty of fighting these guys, prepare to die. A lot. This really isn't a game (or at least a difficulty) for the people who want to just cruise through and shoot at people. Every one of the enemies chooses you as a priority for shooting, and grenades are often thrown so accurately you barely need to move to toss that ticking timebomb back at them! In which case they all then decide to gang up and throw 3 grenades at you and you're forced to run away screaming for mommy and cursing Treyarch.

Enough for the British-inspired litany, I'm American. Continuing the review. The game plays almost exactly the same way CoD4 did. And I say, why not? Don't fix what isn't broken right? Just because it's a different company doesn't mean the game should be completely different. People now have certain expectations for the Call of Duty franchise. To be honest, not a whole lot is new about Call of Duty: World At War. And there wasn't a whole lot new about CoD4 either. Slight tweaks to gameplay and Perks were all there were to be had and there is much of the same here. The game plays amazingly, the music works well within the setting's you're in. Time literally flies, even though you'll probably be going back in it a lot (reference to dying and respawing for those of you that don't get that).

It's hard to criticize this game for a reason. All the reasons you want to hate it, are the same reasons that make it a good game. It's very difficult. But if you've ever heard anything about how the Japanese fought in the war (and I refer only to the Japanese, even though the Germans are just as persistent) you know they fought to keep that land with their very lives. And you feel that in this game. I feel like repeating it playing like CoD4 would be getting repetitive, so I'll just give it a nod. And it's a WWII game, but again, we aren't being inundated by these games anymore. Moving on!

Multi-player plays almost exactly like CoD4 as well, with a few tweaks. Instead of air-strikes at 5 kills, you get artillery strikes, and instead of a helicopter at 7, you get killer dogs. The dogs however are a little annoying. I see the need to reward the player for getting 7 kills in a row without dying; but the dogs are so fast and so hard to shoot while others are trying to shoot you as well, that's it's easy to rack up another 12 kills from the dogs alone. At least with the helicopter, anyone with decent aim and a rocket launcher could take the sucker down and not have to worry about it. They've also included tanks in this game for some reason. However despite the inclusion of several anti-tank weapons (rocket launchers and special anti-tank grenades), Tanks are almost invincible because most people don't use/have those weapons and allows the tanks to get enough kills more often than not to call in the dogs, in which case you're then running from tanks while trying to avoid the dogs as well. Several things were done well in Multiplayer however; such as the inclusion of a beginners multiplayer mode to allow you to level up to 8 without having to fight people with better weapons and perks higher up. They're also rewarding Prestige-ing now.

Overall the game plays like it should, and is in all ways what Call of Duty 4 was. Perfection of the First Person Shooter-style gameplay. Everything just works, and it makes you feel like they've given the WWII era a nice salute with it. However one can only hope they now move on as Infinity Ward has.

Score

8.0

Graphics

The game plays well, but there are still some obvious flaws with the enemies focusing on you, and the NPC's avoiding the enemies 2 feet from them for the enemies 100 yards away.

10.0

Sound

Beautiful game placed within the Pacific Theater, graphics are mind-boggling

7.5

Gameplay

Ties in well, but it's hard to notice. Never really has a moment where you think "This is good music."

8.0

Fun Factor

I'm giving this an 8 because the moments where I'm not dying repeatedly while trying to hide or run from 6 grenades, it's actually quite fun.

7.0

Online

Probably the weakest feature in the game. The dogs feel broken and are gained almost exclusively by tank users. However, its still fun to play and the Zombie mode brings about much joy.

Overall

8.1